Today is International Women’s Day. While there is some progress to celebrate, women keep losing rights at an exponential rate in this country. Despite the fact that women comprise 51% of the world’s population, women remain one of the most systematically exploited, discriminated against, and abused groups. It is high time that we called for the Fifth World Congress on Women.

If one doubts that there is a full-scale War on Women, just consider these recent news stories:

It is important to note that the metastasizing assault on women’s human rights and liberties has everything to do with the takeover of our government by religious zealots who would turn our country into a theocracy. Christian fundamentalism with its long list of hated freedoms and its misogyny has been spreading virulently like a pestilence and has infiltrated all levels of our government, at the local and state level, in the courts, the legislature, and even the White House for 8 years under George W. Bush, and women are far the worse for it. This is reflected in places like Iran with the resurgence of fundamentalist Islam.

If we want to preserve what is left of our democracy and regain the ground we have lost, we must excise the cancerous religious tyranny that has been allowed to grow that continues to eat away at women’s basic human rights, liberties, autonomy, and agency by confronting and condemning all forms of domination of and violence towards women and girls everywhere and affirm women’s and girls’ right to live in a world free from misogyny and male supremacy. A woman’s sovereign right over her life and her body MUST BE RESPECTED!!!

We will work for gender parity in the form of fair and equal representation in government, an immediate end to the War on Women and ALL wars, ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment and Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and we MUST have a 5th World Congress on Women. Please sign the petition at:Support a UN 5th World Conference on Women (5WCW).